1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of automatic guns and more particularly to the field of automatic guns configured for firing telescoped ammunition.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
Over about the last century, since the introduction of cased ammunition, a great variety of automatic guns have been developed for military service throughout the world. Currently, automatic guns include assault pistols, submachine guns, automatic rifles, machine guns and automatic or machine cannon. Exemplary of such automatic guns are the present-day, multi-barrel Gatling cannon which are essentially motorized updates of the pre-1900, hand-cranked Gatling gun.
In many instances, new types of automatic guns have been developed in response to the introduction of new types of military weapons systems. As examples, introduction of military tanks and aircraft in World War I, gave rise to development of anti-tank and antiaircraft cannon and in air-to-air machine guns and cannon.
Once any particular class of automatic gun is introduced, continual re-designs, improvements and new designs are ordinarily developed to improve gun performance in areas of firing rate, range, accuracy and destructive power; to improve operational reliability; to reduce procurement, maintenance and repair costs; to reduce complexity and thereby improve producability an to make the guns easier and simpler to operate.
Gun design has, however, always been limited to a large extent by the types of ammunition readily available, partially in order to standardize weapons for logistic purposes and partially because of ammunition availability. For example, submachine guns have typically been developed so as to fire readily available, conventional pistol ammunition, and light machine guns have typically been developed to fire readily available, conventional rifle ammunition.
Moreover, when new types of automatic guns, for example anti-tank and antiaircraft guns, requiring new types of shells have been developed, the shells have typically been up-sized, down-sized or modified versions of conventional, previously available shells. As a result, conventional, preexisting shell design has, to a great extent, placed limitations on new gun design, particularly in such areas as ammunition handling and storage portions of the gun, including the gun receiver, shell feeder and shell magazine.
As is well known, conventional cased shells, with the exception of shotgun and most pistol shells, are comprised of a shell casing which is typically tapered towards, and necked down at, the forward end, and a projectile which is crimped into the forward end of the casing so as to extend forwardly therefrom. Consequently, such shells are not only sustantially longer than either the casing or the projectile, but are, as well, very non-uniform in cross-section. This relatively long, non-uniform cross-sectional shape of conventional shells results in various inherent gun design deficiencies. As an illustration, when belted ammunition is used to feed an automatic gun, the shells, because of their tapered shape, must usually be pulled rearwardly a shell length to extract the shell from the belt. Thereafter, the extracted shell must generally be moved back forwardly at least about two shell lengths in order to fully chamber the shell for firing. Such required shell movement necessarily requires a relatively long gun receiver which adds to gun weight, space requirements(for example, when mounted in a vehicle or aircraft) and usually also cost. Moreover, a relatively long shell feed path tends to limit the cycling rate of operational portions of the gun, thereby causing the gun's firing rate usually to be slower than would be possible for a shorter shell feed path. On the other hand, achieving a high firing rate with a long shell feed path may require excessively high velocity of operating parts of the gun, thereby causing increased mechanical stresses which reduce parts life and reduce reliability of operation.
Furthermore, the shape of long tapered shells of present configuration is not efficient insofar as ammunition storage in a shell magazine is concerned. For example, when conventional, tapered shells are stored in an ammunition belt, ammunition boxes in which the filled belts are stored contain substantial unutilized space, a significant disadvantage for weapons systems in which ammunition storage space is restricted and a large supply of ammunition is necessary.
Because of the inherent disadvantages associated with use of conventional, long, tapered shells, considerable interest exists, in some branches of the military, in developing cylindrical, telescoped ammunition in which the projectile is fully recessed into the casing. As a result, the entire shell is completely uniform in cross-section. Although such telescoped shells are typically somewhat larger in diameter than corresponding conventional shells of like calibre, telescoped shells are ordinarily substantially shorter than their counterpart, conventional shells, the advantages of being shorter and having a uniform cross-section more than offsetting the disadvantage of being larger in diameter.
An important advantage of cylindrical, telescoped shells is that, unlike conventional tapered shells, the cylindrical shells can, for feeding, be pushed through ammunition belt loops so that shell feeding operations can ordinarily be simplified. Another important advantage is that cylindrical, telescoped shells can be stored in a shell magazine with less wasted space. A given number of cylindrical, telescoped shells can, therefore, be stored in a smaller volume than can a like number of counterpart, conventional tapered shells, thereby reducing magazine size and weight. Alternatively, for a given magazine volume, a larger number of cylindrical, telescoped shells than of conventional shell can be stored.
A potential disadvantage, however, of cylindrical, telescoped shells is that, unlike conventional, tapered shells, there is no shoulder or enlarged diameter region to control and stop forward shell movement, as when the shells are fed into a firing chamber. Another potential disadvantage of cylindrical, telescoped shells is that the forward end of the shell is much greater in diameter than is the projectile so that projectile-barrel alignment problems may arise. Another potential disadvantage of telescoped shells as compared with counterpart conventional shells is that new shell production facilities are required and unknown production and ballistic problems may be encountered. In contrast, extensive production facilities exist for conventional, tapered shells and ballistic characteristics of such shells are well defined and known.
It appears, however, to be considered that the real and/or potential advantages of cylindrical, telescoped shells outweigh the real or potential disadvantages of such shells.
It is apparent that existing guns configured for use with conventional, tapered ammunition cannot interchangeably use cylindrical, telescoped shells. Moreover, it is probably undesirable to modify existing guns to fire telescoped ammunition even if such modification were economically feasible, since full benefit could not be made of the telescoped shells advantages.
As a result, development of cylindrical, telescoped shells requires parallel development of new generation of guns specifically designed to take full advantage of such shells.
It is, therefore, an objective of the present invention to provide a gun configured for firing cylindrical, telescoped ammunition.
Another object of the present invention is to provide an automatic gun configured for firing cylindrical, telescoped ammunition.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide an automatic gun having a firing chamber mounted for oscillating, along a line orthogonal to the barrel bore axis, into and out of alignment with the barrel, cylindrical, telescoped shells being loaded into the chamber when the chamber is out of alignment with the barrel and being fired when the chamber is aligned with the barrel.
Additional objects, advantages and features of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art from the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.